


Kara and Max's Bogus Journey

by newsagogo



Category: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Canon, im building backstories from the ground up gerard way can fight me, roadtrip (kinda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 04:01:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30083178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsagogo/pseuds/newsagogo
Summary: Max needs the hospital, Kara needs to get to Kansas City, Mom and Dad are unplugged and reality is twisting into a new shape.Or: a look at Max-and-Kara then and Kara-and-Max now
Relationships: Animax | Maxwell & Kara 100 Percent | Kara Jeong, Code Blue | Maria Ramirez & Animax | Maxwell, Code Red | Sofia Ramirez & Kara 100 Percent | Kara Jeong, Kara 100 Percent | Kara Jeong/Kara 100 Percent | Kara Jeong's Husband
Comments: 14
Kudos: 8





	Kara and Max's Bogus Journey

**Author's Note:**

> anyways. heres the [radio.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6VuRntDFT12Kcq8Fla9Y7M?si=mGF3exQ5RlOQW1tWcEMC7A&nd=1)
> 
> so fun fact karas husband is called jeffrey   
> yes i disliked most of national anthem yes im writing national anthem fic yes i did just make up so much for this.
> 
> early 2000s only!!

They've won. Apparently.

Mom and Dad have had the plug pulled - what Mom and Dad even were is left unanswered. Mike gets to know his son, isn't that a weird thought? Jaime and Mike seem excited at the idea of being a family, Sofia smiles from the side as Jaime begs to move in with Mike (without her, but Mike seems set on the idea of _his_ family enough to ignore what was already there). Kara's got a husband to go track down, but she gives Sofia her business card with her mobile scrawled on the back and a promise to not be a stranger. It's strange to think their little group came together for this and is so quickly separating. Kara feels like she barely knows the people they are now, is barely known by them. It's a stark contrast to being teens with all sorts of trauma over them, bonding in the backseats of cramped cars and safehouses more scrap than building. 

  
  


Animax - _Maxwell_ is very much in need of a hospital visit though, so Kara thinks she'll deal with this first. Her hands ache.

* * *

Kara’s never liked hospitals much. As a kid they tell you the staff will see any signs and, well, they didn’t for her. As an adult it’s been… complicated, to say the least. When they were kids - when codenames were better than the names their parents gave them - there was no way to get your injuries properly treated. Mom and Dad were powerful, but not that powerful. She wonders if that was ever on purpose, making them all rely on the supplies and hideouts Mom and Dad gave them, but there’s no use following that thought right now.

Animax and her always helped each other patch themselves up, first. The Codes would sort each other first, Red would argue with Blue over which of them had been more reckless and needed what passed for painkillers more, and then Blue would track down wherever Milligram was lurking outside and force him to sit still as she bandaged him up. Red always left those two alone, at least until they came back in, and would pass over anything hot or cold enough wrapped up for Kara’s hands. Some of Kara’s best memories, those are. It sounds depressing like that, like having one friend mock your wobbly stitches on another while the three of you ignore your pains as best you can waiting for the rest of your group to be the highlights of your youth. But that’s how it was for them, she thinks. Re- Sofia, anyways, probably has some better ones but then Sofia also had Maria outside the Killjoys. Plenty of chances for good memories outside of near-death experiences for them. 

But that was then, and this is now, and once again it’s Animax and 100%, waiting together and wondering if Code Red’s gonna swing back around to them. The only difference is they all got taller, got older, and instead of the floor of a shitty abandoned building she’s waiting in an actual hospital.

* * *

Despite her initial refusal to rejoin them when they came calling, Kara finds herself reluctant to leave Max. She’d chalked it up to him being the only one to actually have any interest in how she’s made her life now initially, but she never did lose her memories like some of the others. She remembers lazy hours spent by the Trans-am, sharing secrets and whispered names of places or people to talk to. Animax was always braver than her, first to tell the others he wasn’t a man and never back down from it. He did end up being one of, if not the, first person any of the AKAs (and she does mean any) would talk to about this stuff. He never slipped up with anyone's names, always hung around with the more nervy ones. Trading clothes or hints with any Sadie Hawkins or Loretta or even Books on Tapes who asked. 

He’s changed so much now, she thinks. Maybe that’s why she’s staying. Sure, he’s been brave in fights, but he’s so different now. All the colour from their youth leached out, wearing plain suits in grey and white. It’s a far cry from the pinks and blues and ever-changing patterns of faster days. Brightest colours he has now are bloodstains and an old mask. She thinks of the car that Sofia found for them - Mike did blow up the Trans-Am, and wasn;t that surprising - and how she left the power jacket there while she waits. In her bag, she’s got a raygun and both their old shades. Things are going back to a new normal, again, but she’s not sure how fast it’ll take. She waits, but she’s also standing guard for Max.

She does wonder what it was that drove him to taking Sterelax. The vending machine down the hall is mostly white, but in the top corner is a single colourful can. She buys it, and settles down again to wait. She thinks of Max’s smile and the scars stretched on the corners of his mouth as she rubs the one stretching across her eye. Guess they kinda match now. Always good to find a common ground. 

With some not insignificant usage of old shades and some well-placed lies, Kara manages to get her and Max out of the hospital with minimal questions and no lasting impression on the staff. The two of them are still in their frankly disgusting clothes at this point, bloodstains and all, but the masks hide most of it. Kara helps Max into the passenger seat and slides into the drivers, nervously tapping on the wheel in the silence that settles over the car as she drives. They’re strangers trying to find the outlines of their childhoods in each other, and it’s a little awkward, but when in doubt, mock your fearless leader.

“Well,” comes from Max, “hope we don’t pass any police on the way. Don’t have Mike driving us anymore.”

“Not like he’d drive anything that wasn’t that shitty Trans-Am. He loved that thing more than he cared about us in the back seats”

She can see him grinning out the corner of her eye. “Once again, the Killjoys get ditched without a way home by their white boy leader. Classic Mike.”

Kara has to pull over at this point, laughing herself to tears on the side of the road. Some things really do stay the same. God, she’s missed Max.

  
  


* * *

Animax and 100, a dynamic duo! The Fabulous Killjoys were a gang with uneven foundations, and Mike never really understood the differences. The Codes had each other and Mike had Blue, but outside the analog? Not all of them are so lucky.

What you need to understand is, it's not like it was all bad. Mom and Dad cared for them, they wouldn't doubt that. But the moms and dads at home were different. 

Max's bio family is like this:

His mom and dad want him to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer. It's restrictive, but he does like maths and sciences so he won't fuss. His parents don't let him stay out past certain times, and there's no hanging out with kids whose parents they don't know. But that's how it is with family, right? He doesn't stay over at any possible friends houses, because his dad says there's no point to it. If that means Max feels a little left out, well, his dad only means well - besides, it's not like it would feel much different from nights spent sharing beds and floor space with his cousins. He sits in the kitchen and follows his bibi's instructions to make mandazi ready for the aunties coming round later. 

He's not really allowed to go to the mall himself, and his parents insist he go with a sibling or a cousin and they check in every hour or so. He doesn't want to put too much on his siblings or cousins, so he doesn't go often. Max tries to tell family stories to his few school friends so he's still included, and finds himself doubling back to explain and re-explain the lack of distinction between cousin and sibling so often he eventually just lets people talk at or over him. He feels like a caged animal sometimes. He tries to ignore the feeling, he knows speaking out gets you sore hands or legs for backtalk. He focuses on the patterns of the kangas that his mom wraps around her hair and listens to his dad tell him how having a doctor, engineer, or lawyer for a son would make him so proud.

He spends a fair bit of free time at the library. His parents approve of how much he reads, so he's relatively unsupervised there. He studies to keep his grades up to -keep his parents from screaming at how disrespectful he is-, sure, but the librarian turns a blind eye to him wandering aisles for information for things his family expresses disgust for.

  
  


Kara's bio family is like this:

She's an only child, strictly speaking, but if you asked her she'd call her cousins her siblings. Her dad works a lot and often leaves her with family often enough she has her own drawer for clothes in some places. Her father has an image in his head of how his son should be and she will spend years doing her best to match up to the impossible before realising what's wrong. But her dad insists she fill time with sports and studying, and talks about how she should aim to get into good colleges and do law, or medicine. She does her best to give him no reason to get angry with her grades, and studies as much as she is able.

Her cousins (her siblings, really) keep her secrets. Once, an older brother catches her sketching out clothes she'd seen on magazine covers from memories in the margins of her notebooks and she is so worried he'll tell her father that she bursts into tears. He, faced with a crying kid a decade younger than him, panics and grabs his sister to calm her down. By noon the next day Kara is given an old but mostly empty sketchbook from her siblings and a place to hide it. The ones closer to her age give excuses to her dad about where they're going to be on weekends and drag her to any fashion or art-related thing they can find when she stays over with red eyes and bruised arms. 

  
  


She goes to the library. Neither her or Max are allowed their own phones, and neither risk calling landlines, so sometimes they don't manage to meet. But they manage often enough. She sneaks in hot drinks on colder days for Max - the only cure she knows for painful joints - and he brings her wild patterned fabrics he swears noone back home will miss. Two kids under so many masks, doing their best to be honest with each other.

Of Course, this is before Books on Tapes bring out Mom and Dad's screen gifts. Before Mike drives off again with Blue's body (without them). 

Before Kara's family trip up on a lie and Max's move house and both their fathers find out about the socialising part of the library trips.

  
  


* * *

Max is dozing in the car. He’s not fully awake, but the ache of injuries is low enough that he can drift as Kara drives. They’re probably making good time, he thinks, but he also has _no idea_ where they’re actually heading? He’ll ask when they stop. 

It’s incredibly strange to pull himself awake and _not_ have been sleeping in the backseat. Guess being in a car not driven by Mike has its perks. He realises they’re both halfway strangers to each other now. A lot has changed from the Kara-and-Max of then to the Kara-and-Max of now and he watches her with eyes half closed as she drives, cataloguing the differences and the changes. Do parts of him seem as foreign to her? 

He doesn’t want to end this trip by going separate ways again. The idea of blood family with official ties only doesn’t appeal to him the same way it seemed to for Mike, but he’s not sure how to express that. He misses Kara, and always had missed her and Sofia and even Mike. Mostly, he misses not being there for the changes.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


When Max was in college, he used to hang out in the local record stores half his free time. Any sort of independent shop, tiny half-hidden bookstores and cafes, he’d find most of them. Pick up zines and leaflets, look for anything pinned onto a noticeboard to find something to do. He’d tried events held at college, but it was always too much and not enough. Too much pressure to act normal, not enough people around who’d chosen to remember. Lot of people go all out when they get to college, free from the eyes of family and jumping at the chance to be how they want. Max was no different.

But it was those smaller events, those advertised in harder to find areas that he went to regularly. Anywhere the people dressed wildly enough. It was… relieving to be around people more like him, in more than one way. He remembers making eye contact with strangers and just _knowing_ they remembered Mom and Dad. He isn’t sure how many kids decided not to forget, if he’s honest. Only that the ones who did struggled differently to the ones who didn’t. Reinventing yourself. Every AKA did that when they started, and Max found it easy enough to do again there. 

You learn a lot when you do. And people still confide in Max, with his easy acceptance and quiet talk of identities. Max talks about pronouns with a girl he helps dye her hair in the bathroom of a shared flat, learns to do his makeup from a guy who dragged the group to every gig in the area, trial-and-errors his way through sewing with his roommate and their boyfriend, swaps hair care tips with the ones unlucky enough to have parents who never learned how. He loses himself in the feeling of being part of a group again, and from time to time finds the few others to swap stories and bottles and bond over the hell that was growing up. 

  
  


He has friends, and he misses his old ones. The days are safer, but nightmares are common. There’s not much reality-bending in college, despite the joking late night in the library, though his bones still ache and pain him often enough. But it’s enough for the Max of then, to have people willing enough to give him copies of notes when his arms hurt enough that he can’t stand to write for long, to look into their own ways of helping him. It’s a good break from back home, where the cause and issue is claimed to only be his own fault and habits. (He leaves the cane that a friend of a friend got him at college when he visits home).

One of the girls in his building used to still use her powers. She was like the Codes, but instead of pure invisibility it was just… sliding under people’s notice. When they’d walk back together at night, she’d hold onto that buzz of Notice-Us-Not everytime they passed a group of men (especially in uniform). There’s a joke in there about using your childhood trauma to avoid getting more, he thinks. But back then they just called her Stealth Queen and changed the subject, stuck to a buddy system - nobody asked what it was that gives you that kinda power, but they understood.

After college, though. Max knows he's never been brave when alone. People slip through the cracks as the years go by, those still seeing the other side fall out of contact one by one and out of the minds of those who never could. More gaps in the groups and less to remember what linked them all together. He tries looking for them a few times, and he tries not to think of those days too hard. Eventually everyone falls away, slowly but surely, and Max is all alone. With nothing else but the ghosts of memories, it's easy to give in to Sterelax. Max is alone.

It's funny how things come full circle, isn't it?

* * *

  
  
  


When Kara was in college, she was doing her best to put the AKAs behind her. Some people chose to plug in and tune out, but she wasn't going to risk all the memories just to forget the violence. She picks business, to appease her father - which works about as well as anything does. She holds onto memories of truths in backseats of cars and learns to avoid remembering the hell of her childhood. She doesn’t go to her father, and stays over older cousins and friends when possible, and when they find her curled up and crying on the floor they believe when she says it’s just bad dreams of her father.

Kara first meets Jeffery when neither of them are going by those names yet and both of them had had far too much caffeine in a library at 3am and Kara had just tripped down a staircase and Jeffrey had his arm stuck in a vending machine. Needless to say neither of them were at their best, both staring vacantly at the other's state of mild distress on the floor. She helps him pry his arm out of the machine and he helps her limp her way out of the library on a quest for actual food. Despite a rough start, they end up fast friends - though half their meetups consist of ill-advised ideas at 3am. 

She drags him with her on visits to her cousins when she realises how often he skips meals (not that she can talk) and he listens to her ramble on and on about whatever artist she’s been reading about in her spare time. She feels comfortable with him, but she isn’t yet comfortable in her own skin - both are still trying to fit into different boxes. He helps her bleach her hair one night before an exam and she helps cut his hair shorter than he’d manage alone. 

They circle each other in social groups. Both growing into the people they are, and learning to introduce that person to friends and strangers. They drift around each other, not quite as close as either would like, but close enough that even after college, they still keep in touch.

  
  


When she graduates, Kara moves in with her more outlandish cousin and her partner. She starts saving up for better days. 

* * *

Eighteen hours when both of you have newly healing scars and reality is attempting to re-rebalance makes for a very exhausting trip. It's worse when you've been wearing the same clothes the entire time. Luckily, at least one of those is easy to fix. The two of them are in a thrift store - less questions being asked of them there, and reality always felt thin around these spaces anyways. Kara already has a few pieces picked out for herself, but she looks at where Max is staring blankly at plain tshirts.

As always, Kara breaks the silence first.

“Any reason you stopped wearing patterns?”

  
  
  


Max pauses. Thinks of times spent with cousins with close-cropped hair braiding his into cainerows, uncles passing through with dreads one month and shaved the next. Thinks of the same yards of fabric being used as carriers, skirts, hairwraps. Thinks of borrowing lipsticks in club bathrooms, shared nail colours in car rides. He’s not sure when he stopped holding onto all that colour, all the ways to change his looks. 

Kara is patient, holding a shirt that can only be charitably described as an eyesore. It’s clearly bigger than them, but it’s closer to Max’s size than hers. Max is holding one black tanktop. She holds the shirt out to him. 

“I guess… it’s been a while since I could dress without risking my job.” That risk probably doesn’t matter anymore, though.

She grins as he takes the shirt from her. “What changed?”

“Kara, I don’t know if you heard this but-” he starts. “I got half kidnapped from my job before work was over a little while back, and I haven’t called in to explain it. I don’t think I even have a flat anymore, let alone work.” But he smiles as he says it, he’s alright with starting over.

Kara’s smile gets even wider, if possible. 

“Well, dear Max, I guess I’m introducing you to Jeffrey _and_ his parents since you’re sticking around. Out of the kindness of my heart.”

“Does that heart also include your wallet? ‘Cause I didn’t make much as a teacher.” Max has been buying all the shitty food this trip, he does _not_ want to know the state of his bank account right now, and he’d really like to grab that ankle length skirt - he’s a bit sick of tailored pants at this point.

She rolls her eyes at him. She was planning to pay for it anyways, but she enjoys Max’s theatrics.

* * *

  
  


Don’t speak ill of the dead, sure, but one thing Max will always stand by is that first and foremost Maria Ramirez was a bitch. She was a friend, she was loved, but Max is pretty sure he’s the only one outside of Sophia who saw Jaime’s anger and thought that maybe it runs in the family. 

Once, when they were hanging out with a couple Vacation Adventure Society folks she grabbed him by the shirt, kissed him, then looked him dead in the eyes for a few seconds and told him she’s pretty sure she’s only into guys. Which, validating in a weird way, mainly just a confusing minute of his life, mildly terrifying next hour because Mike got jealous easy and this was one of Blue-and-Mike’s off times. First time he told her he was bi, she said this still meant he can only pick one white person to have in a relationship, and Red had laughed and said she doubted he’d lower his standards to Blue’s extent and he’d had to hold her back when she lunged for her before Mike got back and saw. Hearing Blue say “it’ll be fun, I swear” was pretty much the biggest bad omen you’d get in Max’s eyes. Didn’t stop him going along with whatever it was, but he never claimed to be a good decision maker. Her and Red were terrors, but even on her own Blue felt unstoppable. 

Mike seems to have forgotten that the rest of them heard her last words too. Max just wonders how much like her Jaime really is. Had things gone different, Max would like to think he could’ve called Jaime his nephew too. He tries not to feel too bitter over Sofia never trying to reconnect over the time he was Jaime’s teacher.

  
  
  


* * *

Sofia Ramirez rings Kara Jeong at 11pm a few days into the trip, while her and Max are sat on the bed in a cheap motel room arguing over the better Star Trek series and movie. They don't bother asking for a room with two beds, and neither feels too comfortable with seperate rooms yet. It's not much different from being in the younger half of their cousins and having to share beds with them and siblings, except this time the people sharing the bed aren't trying to kick each other off in the middle of the night.

Kara hisses at Max to _shut up,_ half so she can answer the phone and half because she refuses to agree that the One with the Whales is the best Trek film. Clearing her throat, she presses accept and-

"Sofiaaa, hey!!" 

-is instantly beaten to greeting her by Max. She elbows him in reponse. 

"Hi Sofia. Yes, Max is here with me. Ignore him." Max is dramatically miming his own death across from her.

They play catch-up, neither making note of the time. Sofia asks why Max is with Kara - easy, he's good company and has finally fallen into the trap of meeting her family (she's missed him and wants him in her life again). Kara asks Sofia how Jaime is - good, with Mike and excited to live with his "real dad" (he went so fast, and Mike didn't even think of including her, she's thinking of moving). Max chimes in asking about how reality's doing on her end - about as well as everywhere else (it's easier to spot people who used to twist it, sometimes you'll open a book to see half the page saying one thing and the other half saying another. there's no rhyme or reason to it).

Sofia sounds so _tired_ now, and Kara worries for her, but she covers it up by telling Sofia to come visit when she's able and promises to call her when they reach Jeffrey's folks in Kansas City. Sofia agrees easily enough, and offers to go check if any of Max's things are still at his flat, though neither of them are much convinced his landlord didn't throw it all.

Sofia says she's missed not being alone. Kara tells her that now she's got her number she's hardly going to have any time to herself. Max states nobody is getting out of meeting Jeffrey, Sofia included, and she breathes out a laugh in response.

They stay talking for a good few hours.

  
  


* * *

The Sofia of then and the Sofia of now seem pretty similar, in Kara’s view. Still strong, still making better exits than them, still loving her family fiercely. Sure, instead of her 17 year old cousin it’s her 12 year old nephew, but Kara recognises the Code Red of it all.

Red always spotted her first at the playgrounds, always knew where any of the others were. She’d always have a few Pristeens or Lorettas following her around at bigger AKA meetups, with badly hidden infatuation (Kara would like to think she hid hers better, but she thinks it was less hidden and more not noticed with all the others). Red could be just as loud, if not louder, than Blue, and the Codes were the most social of the Killjoys. 

Back then, Red always insisted the Killjoys were as much her family as Blue and her Nana were. Told her if she thought it was that easy to get rid of her, her brain clearly didn’t work at 100%. 

If Books on Tape hadn’t brought out the screens, if Mom and Dad hadn’t supplied them, would they have still been family to each other? Hell, Kara wasn’t even close with half the AKAs - though she had a soft spot for the Weirdss and got on well enough with the Society - and she had still thought they’d know each other as they got older. 

But in the end, they didn’t, and Kara got older watching the people she used to fight back-to-back with leave it all behind and open businesses, and never seem to have any nightmares from it all. And Red became Sofia and became someone Kara didn’t see again for years.

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  


By the time they cross into Missouri, they've got a collection of increasingly absurd sunglasses, slightly more absurd clothes, one cane for Max's bad days, and a few lipsticks that had started as one and ended as the others. 

Simply put, at this point their bond is unbreakable because they haven’t killed each other on the way here. 

Kara finds herself bouncing slightly with excitement, from being able to see her husband safely _and_ have him meet her best friend. Max has been talking himself in circles for about twenty minutes, having just realised he's turning up empty handed with no food as a guest.

  
  


Mom and Dad's traces are still around, and easy enough to spot. In between the screens and speakers are all sorts, though. The absurd mixing into the mundane, and pedestrians either notice it or have always known or can't even see. It puts Kara a little on edge, seeing remnants of what she considered her hellish childhood, but at the same time something just feels better about having the veil pulled away from it.

Aside from that-

"Kara. My dear 100%."

-frankly she thinks she's doing well-

"Esteemed missus Jeong this part of town seems a nice place, but?

-but she's surprised it's taken this long-

"I realise I haven't seen you call anyone other than Sofia? Do your folks even know you've got a plus one?"

-for Max to realise she hasn't had a plan for how the actual event will go.

But! She didn't get this far by doubting herself (much)! She tells Max to calm down, she's sure they'll love him. And besides, she's turning up with a brand new scar so if anything, arriving with her best friend is going to be the good news!

Her attitude seems to put Max at ease, and he leans back in his seat. 

"Well, when I end up the favourite, you'll have no one to blame but yourself."

"I'll never recover, truly." she deadpans.

She can't wait for him to meet Jeffrey. She thinks if Jeffrey knew, he'd be just as excited to meet him and Sofia, hopefully even Jaime. Both parts of her family, together.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes u gotta put the african culture in ther for funsies....  
> anyways. i have many thoughts about kara and max and yes max does end up becoming the favourite of jeffreys parents, much to kara and jeffreys surprise. she introduces him to jeffrey as her best friend and he then says hes the one that infected kara with gender and jeffrey laughs so hard he chokes
> 
> gerard way these are my characters now.  
> vote now on your favourite patented nestie unnamed character /s


End file.
